Under the current proposal, the child’s school must be closed for no less than five consecutive days for families to be eligible. The coronavirus aid package being negotiated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Trump administration Friday was expected to give USDA authority to allow states to provide emergency food stamp assistance to families whose children could miss out on free or reduced-price meals if schools are closed. Several measures now pending in Congress would offer a nationwide waiver so school meals can be offered in a wide variety of settings, such as food banks, and allow the USDA to grant waiver requests expanding eligibility even if they resulted in added costs to the government. Advocates and states are pressing the agency to ease some rules, but USDA leaders say it’s up to lawmakers to loosen eligibility. Agriculture Department oversees food programs in schools, but it has restrictions on how students can get their subsidized meals. In the U.S., more than two-thirds of the 31 million students who regularly eat school lunches, or 22 million, depend on a free or reduced-price school lunch as a main source of their daily nutrition, according to the School Nutrition Association. “We haven’t dealt with anything like this, so we’re doing as we’re learning.” Everything is evolving by the hour with new cases, new proclamations,” said Michelle Price, a school administrator who oversees 29 districts in Washington state, where many schools are closed until April 24. The urgent decisions have left schools and cities scrambling to figure out how to make sure students don’t go hungry. “There is evidence the virus is already present in the communities we serve, and our efforts now must be aimed at preventing its spread,” Los Angeles Superintendent Austin Beutner and San Diego Superintendent Cindy Marten said in a joint statement. “They depend upon the schools for shelter and in some instances for where they get their clothing and other needs.”īut others, like Los Angeles and San Diego, which had held out on closing for the same reasons, on Friday announced they would close. “A substantial percentage of our students depend upon the schools for eating,” Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Thursday. Some of the nation’s largest districts, including New York City and Chicago, were open for now, with concerns over their mission to provide free or reduced-cost meals to hundreds of thousands of students from lower-income families. READ MORE: Most schools are completely unprepared for coronavirus and virtual learning Congress is considering making it easier for school meals to be passed out at places like food banks as schools shut down in Ohio, Maryland and New Mexico and in major cities like Los Angeles, Houston, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C.Įven though most patients infected with the virus have only mild or moderate symptoms such as a fever or cold, school closures are widely accepted as a key way to slow the spread. close their doors to try to prevent the spread of the new virus, they’re cobbling together arrangements for grab-and-go lunch bags or setting up delivery routes. She’s among the parents who are relying on school leaders as they look for ways to keep millions of America’s poorest children from going hungry. But with schools shutting down over coronavirus concerns, she’s scrambling to pick up the meals, care for her kids and keep her job.Įsco, a single mother who was just promoted to manager at a Dollar Tree, fears she’ll be fired because she can’t work following school closures in Elk Grove, the fifth-largest district in California. (AP) - Kiyana Esco needs free school lunches and breakfasts to feed her six children.
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